# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S155
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 155

...faith and the betrayal of it ..., one of the rotten fruits of the Union, by which every clear and definite confession of faith and every forthright and unbending earnestness of the conscience of faith is killed .. Even in Electoral Brandenburg people long took more interest in union with the Roman Catholics than in union with the Reformed. As appears from the aberrations of conservative churchliness in Prussia, uniting with the Roman Catholics is even today not so far from the "Unionists" themselves. And it is certain that wherever, through the Union, the conscience of the truth of the faith has been undermined in liberalistic and pietistic circles as much as in conservative ones, then the real power of resistance — namely that of faith — against the Roman church is broken as well."

Dr. K. Jürgens, known as Luther's biographer, died at Wiesbaden on December 2 of last year.

Jesuits. From the beginning of the Italian war in the year 1859 until today, so writes the Pilger a. S. in its issue of February 23 of this year, the Jesuits have lost 3 houses and colleges in Lombardy, 6 in the Duchy of Modena, 11 in the Papal States, 19 in the Kingdom of Naples, and 15 in Sicily. Nearly 1,500 members of the order have been driven out in this time. What are we Americans to say to this? This uncanny guard of the Antichrist will, without doubt, in large part now favor us here with its arrival.

Newer Prophetic Theology. In Bauer's and Stirner's correspondence bulletin of January 1, a chiliastic pamphlet by a certain Schlier, "the twelve minor prophets," is highly praised, and it is remarked among other things: "It is a widespread opinion among Protestant people that the prophets are too difficult for a simple reader of the Bible to understand, since even the learned scarcely understand them. But this comes only from the fact that the clear words of the prophets have been obscured by a figurative and allegorizing interpretation, and are not taken in simple faith just as they stand. To convince oneself of this, one need only compare an older exposition of the Bible — say, the Weimar Bible or the Hirschberg Bible — with this tract." For the sake of their chiliastic reveries, the Old Testament is now suddenly supposed to be bright and clear without the light of the New. The consequence is that these chiliasts arrive once more at an interpretation of Scripture quite similar to that of the Pharisees and scribes in Christ's own time. Setting their miserable products far above the classic exegetical works of an earlier age, they flatter themselves greatly on taking all Old Testament modes of speech "in simple faith, just as they stand." The interpretation of the Holy Spirit himself in the New Testament is thereby branded as false spiritualism and blustered against with an insistence on standing by the letter of Scripture — an insistence that is nothing other than the most carnal construal, following the thoughts of one's own reason and one's own heart. This breed of newer theologians is like the Arians, who, when they denied Christ's deity, appealed to the fact that they held fast to the letter of Scripture, in which Christ himself says, "the Father is greater than I"; and like the Zwinglians, who called Christ's own word their iron wall: "the flesh profiteth nothing." Wretched theologians! With their constant insistence that they are the ones holding to the letter of Scripture, while the old theologians are supposed to have departed from it, they will no doubt succeed with unknowing people and unsteadied hearts in selling them their shoddy wares — but Christians who have drunk the pure milk of the Gospel at the breasts of the rightly-believing Church will not be deceived by them.

The Schwarzburg principalities, which formerly lay quite low churchly, now shine brightly in the land of Thuringia. Leo in Rudolstadt, Drenkmann in Arnstadt, Zahn in Sondershausen, and many other faithful witnesses here and there throughout the land build vigorously at the temple of the Lord and wield bright weapons the while against the Samaritans — and to Sondershausen the year 1860 has brought a doughty man out of the Weimar region, the seminary director Helmrich, who is called to create something new among the teachers of the land, and whose faithful, faith-filled work may the Lord bless for the furtherance of his kingdom! (Freimund.)